Our purpose at the Omega Institute is to help the believer understand and appreciate the doctrines of Scripture in a way he or she can truly digest and apply. This series of devotionals cover the spectrum of Evangelical biblical doctrine in such a way that the Christian can meditate each week on a different truth from Scripture so as to master the essentials and better know and serve his or her Lord.
Key Verses:
“Therefore He is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.”
—Hebrews 7:25 (NASB)
In the last two devotionals dedicated to the study of the Trinity and why it matters, I can almost hear my critics object that everything I have written can remain true of God if He was uni-personal. In our first devotional, I asserted that the doctrine of the Trinity presents God as sending (the Father), sent (the Son) and securing (the Holy Spirit). The opponent to this doctrine, however, can claim that God as one Person can choose to go (equal to sending), come to earth as a man (equal to being sent) and now, restored to glory, minister to the believer by securing the benefits of the work of the Son (or the role He played as such) from on high. But is going the same as sending and is having gone the same as being sent? What you have in various forms of modalism (the belief that God in one divine Person plays the distinct roles we call Father, Son and Spirit) is the appearance of relationship between these titles and hence, the appearance of relational dynamic in the work of salvation. The willingness of the Son to please the Father is largely a metaphor for God’s desire to avenge His own sense of justice or protect His own holiness. The consistent references to the Father, the Father’s will, the Father’s Kingdom and the Father’s initiative in contrast to the Son’s submission (see passages like: John 5:30; 8:28, 42; 12:49; 14:10) are nothing but play-acting on the part of a singular Person: there is no such relationship between divine Persons, but merely the appearance of such. Add to this the same language used of the Holy Spirit by the Son in John 16:13 –
“But when He, the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative; but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.”
Think of the implications of a passage such as this if the modalist position is correct: the single person that is God is speaking as a second person who is speaking of a third. In other words, God, acting the role of the Father, is speaking in the role of the Son, who is saying that only the first role takes the initiative in everything the second role does. The third role is also spoken as one which does not take its own direction but that of either the first or the second. Here is the one hundred and twenty-eight thousand dollar question: “why speak of roles in this way if only one Person is performing all of the action?” How meaningless is it to say that one mode or role, one mask the one Person of God wears takes initiative for the other, or submits to the other, or loves the other, or reveals the other (John 1:18)?
Is Jesus Christ just a clever disguise concocted by a God who is but one Person? When we consider the other option, we see a bit clearer how absurd and how inconsistent with the character of God this possibility is. The other option is this: Jesus Christ is fully God, fully in relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit, who, as equal divine Persons, cooperate lovingly in the work of redemption and demonstrate not only the love of God but example the kind of unity God desires from His people as we cooperate with one another in Kingdom work. This was the Son’s prayer (John 17:22, 23).
For those who reject the deity of the Son, their Savior cannot save. As one considers what it would take for sinful men to be made right in the sight of a holy God, it would take nothing less than a God to save them. No created being, no matter how majestic, can pay a price as infinite as required to both atone for the sin of mankind as well as give to men the very righteousness of God. Yet, this is exactly what God did through the Person of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:18-21).
This is why the author of Hebrews says that this Christ, who is the radiance of the Father’s glory and the exact representation of His nature (Hebrews 1:3), is able to save to the uttermost (KJV) all those who draw near to Him”
“Therefore He is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.”
Hebrews 7:25 (NASB)
The succeeding verses (Hebrews 7:26 – 28) extol the virtues of a High Priest who is far more than man or that of an exalted creature, but one who is indeed God Himself. This is a Savior that can save. This is a Savior that can be worshipped. This is the difference the Trinity makes.
—Larry Carrino
